www.it-ebooks.info Blender 3D Incredible Machines Design, model, and texture complex mechanical objects in Blender Christopher Kuhn BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI www.it-ebooks.info Blender 3D Incredible Machines Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information Publishing Month: February 2016 Production reference: 1180216 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK ISBN 978-1-78528-201-0 www.packtpub.com www.it-ebooks.info Credits Author Copy Editor Christopher Kuhn Charlotte Carneiro Reviewer Project Coordinator Jacek Herman Kinjal Bari Commissioning Editor Proofreader Priya Singh Safis Editing Acquisition Editor Indexer Divya Poojari Rekha Nair Content Development Editor Graphics Trusha Shriyan Jason Monteiro Technical Editor Production Coordinator Murtaza Tinwala Melwyn Dsa www.it-ebooks.info About the Author Christopher Kuhn is a 3D artist and Blender enthusiast He has been heavily involved in the Blender community since 2010 His company, Kuhn Industries LLC, creates custom 3D assets and educational materials for both professional and non professional uses In addition to his 3D courses on CGCookie.com, he's written two previous books on Blender (Build Your Own Rocket Bike and Death to the Armatures) www.it-ebooks.info About the Reviewer Jacek Herman is a Master of Fine Arts, 3D generalist and Blender enthusiast He spends most of his time locked in a basement, building game assets from scratch or designing 3D printable junk He specializes in tedious craft of UV texturing ridiculously large models www.it-ebooks.info www.PacktPub.com For support files and downloads related to your book, please visit www.PacktPub.com Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy Get in touch with us at service@packtpub.com for more details At www.PacktPub.com , you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks https://www2.packtpub.com/books/subscription/packtlib Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library Here, you can search, access, and read Packt's entire library of books Why subscribe? Fully searchable across every book published by Packt Copy and paste, print, and bookmark content On demand and accessible via a web browser Free access for Packt account holders If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view entirely free books Simply use your login credentials for immediate access www.it-ebooks.info Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1: Sci-Fi Pistol - Creating the Basic Shapes A project overview Creating the barrel Modeling a handgrip and other pieces Summary Chapter 2: Sci-Fi Pistol - Adding Details Finishing the handgrip Cutting shapes into our gun Circles, angles, and edge splits Adding final details General workflow for detailing Summary Chapter 3: Texturing and Rendering Your Sci-Fi Pistol Preparing our scene Enabling GPU rendering Adding materials and textures Summary Chapter 4: Spacecraft – Creating the Basic Shapes Shaping the body Creating the accessories Summary 25 32 33 33 47 66 72 76 87 88 89 89 99 117 118 118 132 136 Chapter 5: Spacecraft - Adding Details Refining our ship Adding detail with pipes Finishing our main objects Do it yourself – completing the body Building the landing gear Adding the cockpit Creating small details Working with Path objects Finishing touches www.it-ebooks.info 137 137 166 170 183 185 197 202 209 217 Summary 221 Chapter 6: Spacecraft – Materials, Textures, and Rendering 222 Preparing the model and scene Creating materials Adding decals with UV maps Other possibilities Summary 223 228 242 247 249 Chapter 7: Modeling Your Freestyle Robot 250 Modeling for Freestyle Blocking out your robot Creating the body with Subdivision Surfacing Finishing the robot Summary Chapter 8: Robot - Freestyle Rendering Preparing the scene Marking Freestyle edges Creating materials Rendering and material options Summary 250 261 263 270 276 277 277 283 284 292 300 Chapter 9: Low-Poly Racer – Building the Mesh 301 Building for external applications Starting the truck model Manifold versus non-manifold meshes Adding details Summary 301 304 312 315 324 Chapter 10: Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures Texturing workflow Adding materials Unwrapping and baking Adding detail in an Image Editor Checking the Texture Map Summary 325 325 326 337 365 367 372 Index 373 [ ii ] www.it-ebooks.info Preface Welcome to Blender 3D Incredible Machines In this book, we're going to explore the world of hard-surface modeling in Blender This is distinct from organic modeling (creating humans/animals, and more), and there are different methods that we can employ to get the best results We'll focus on ways to create complex machinery, vehicles, and other similar models in Blender What this book covers Chapter 1, Sci-Fi Pistol – Creating the Basic Shapes, covers the basic modeling tools as we start our first project It should be a good refresher for more experienced users, and will set the groundwork for more advanced modeling projects Chapter 2, Sci-Fi Pistol – Adding Details, looks at specific modeling techniques for adding detail to hard surface models These techniques will be used to finish building our gun model, but will be applicable to many other projects as well Chapter 3, Texturing and Rendering Your Sci-Fi Pistol, takes a look at the Cycles rendering engine and how to create basic materials for it We'll also set up a basic render scene that we can use in the future Chapter 4, Spacecraft – Creating the Basic Shapes, begins a more complex modeling project—a Sci-Fi spacecraft We'll focus more on general technique and workflow here, since we covered a lot of the basic tools already in the first two chapters Chapter 5, Spacecraft – Adding Details, focuses heavily on detail-oriented modeling techniques We'll look at important considerations when adding detail to a model as well as a number of tools and procedures for doing so Chapter 6, Spacecraft – Materials, Textures, and Rendering, builds on the techniques from our last project We'll create a number of different materials for our spacecraft We'll also briefly cover UV mapping and managing materials slots Chapter 7, Modeling Your Freestyle Robot, looks at modeling for a specific type of rendering—FreeStyle There are a number of special modeling techniques we'll want to use to get the best possible results www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures In order to understand this better, go ahead and test it: This image should give you a good idea what ambient occlusion is all about By combining it with your Texture version (or even with your Full Render version), you can quickly add some detail and complexity to your final image texture Adding detail in an Image Editor I recommend saving your various baked renders as separate images, and then combining them in a 2D Image Editor that supports layers (such as GIMP, Photoshop, and so on.) Once you've combined them together in a way that you like, you can also go through and manually paint highlights, shadows, and decals onto your texture map [ 365 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures For instance, I've quickly painted a basic tread pattern onto the tire: This doesn't look particularly realistic (as a tread pattern), but it's just an example You can easily find real tread patterns online or paint your own Another thing you can is take photographs of real car parts and overlay them onto the texture image For example, you can take a photo of a real fog light and use that: With other Blender projects, we wouldn't want to this The 2D image of a light will never be as good as a properly modeled lens with transparent materials For a game model, however, we can't afford the geometry we'd need to model it; most game engines won't give you that level of realism for glass surfaces anyway [ 366 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures You can also take this opportunity to add any decals or logos that you'd like: With a little time and practice, you can create some pretty nice texture maps with these techniques Checking the Texture Map After we're done, we can test out the material/textures in Blender We'll use the texture map to create some Cycles materials and ensure that everything lines up properly You can start by just adding a basic background, lighting setup, and camera: [ 367 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures Then, we'll create our materials For instance, here is a quick car paint material using the texture image: [ 368 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures For the tire, we can also use that texture image to map to the Displacement: For increased realism, you can also create a separate image map for this purpose Rather than showing colors/textures, it will only show the Normals or Displacement that we want on various parts of the truck Here's a quick example of a normal map in use: [ 369 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures And here's a quick version of the truck that uses normal maps to add damage/detail to the body (Render Credit: James Clayton): Feel free to experiment with separate Displacement/normal maps However, keep in mind that every image you have to load will increase render time and place additional stress on the CPU/GPU Only use a separate map when you're sure that your game or other 3D program can handle it [ 370 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures With basic Cycles materials, here's what the truck may look like: Again, this doesn't really matter; the point of the model is to be used in another application, so don't spend a lot of time fine-tuning the materials in Cycles All we're really looking for is any alignment or texture issues and generally making sure the model looks okay [ 371 ] www.it-ebooks.info Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures When you're satisfied, make sure that you delete unneeded objects from your scene (lights, background, cameras, and so on) Then you can use the Export menu to Output the model into a format of your choice: Summary In this chapter, we created basic materials for the truck We then used the Blender Internal engine to create basic procedural textures After unwrapping the model, we baked our textures out and used that image to create and test materials in Cycles As with the previous project, we've just covered the basics of this topic However, it should provide a good baseline for you to take it further [ 372 ] www.it-ebooks.info Index C 3D models building, for external applications 301, 302, 303, 304 circular cut adding, for screw holes 65 creating 47 circular shapes adding 66 cockpit, spacecraft adding 197, 199, 201 color-change effect creating 106 curved background plane adding 95 Diffuse material, adding 96 Subdivision surface, adding 95 Cycles Render engine about 88 using 89 A accessories, spacecraft creating 133 angles adjusting 66 Array modifier 83 Ashikhmin-Shirley 101 Average Island Scale option 352 B barrel, sci-fi pistol creating 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24 Edge Split modifier, adding 19 handgrip, modeling 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 Mirror modifier, adding 10 Beckman 101 Bevel tool 21 Blender Cycles about 250 Blender Internal about 250 materials, creating 284 Blender normals, correcting 15 Bridge Edge Loops 13 Buffer Shadow about 281 D decals adding, with UV maps 242, 244 details adding, to spacecraft 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164 E Edge Split modifier 66 exhaust ports, spacecraft engine working on 170, 173, 175 F final details adding, to sci-fi pistol 72 www.it-ebooks.info 319, 320, 321, 322, 323 workflow, texturing 325 Lunatics! URL 299 Freestyle about 250 edges, marking 283 modeling 250 Full Render option 362 M G manifold meshes versus non-manifold meshes 312, 313, 314 materials, spacecraft creating 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241 materials adding, to sci-fi pistol 99 creating, for robot 284 creating, of spacecraft 226, 228, 229 mechanical details creating, workflow 76 Mesh Display 14 Mirrored Objects parts, adding 58 models, spacecraft creating 224 GCX 101 Global Illumination about 364 GPU rendering enabling 90 grappling gun adding, to spacecraft engine 172 H handgrip, barrel about 33 customizing 34 modeling 25, 27, 28, 29 I Image Editor details, adding 365 Inset tool 55, 59, 127, 139 InsetExtrude tool 59 N N-Gons 15 Node Editor 102 non-manifold meshes versus manifold meshes 312, 313, 314 normals 14 K Knife tool 142 about 126 knife tool activating 17 P L landing gear building 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196 Low-Poly Racer about 325 materials, adding 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336 truck model, creating 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312 truck model, detailing 315, 316, 317, 318, Path objects working with 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216 pipe-style detailing, sci-fi adding 77 major segments 78 minor segments 78 Torus, adding 77 pipes adding, to spacecraft engine 166, 167, 168, 169 Project From View option 346 Proportional Editing 61 [ 374 ] www.it-ebooks.info exhaust ports, working on 170, 171, 173, 174, Q 181 quads 15 R Ray Shadow about 281 robot arms, detailing 270 body, creating with Subdivision Surfacing 263 building 261 material options 292, 298 materials, creating 284 rendering 292, 294, 296 scene, preparing 277 S scene, spacecraft camera, adding 98 creating 224, 225, 226 preparing 223 scene light, adding 279 preparing, for robot 277 setting up 89 sci-fi pistol barrel, creating detail, adding 72 mterials, adding 99 overview rendering 88 shapes, cutting 47 shine, adding 100 texturing 88 Screw tool about 178 segments 21 shading problems fixing 54 Sharp 101 Shrink Wrap modifier 47 Shrinkwrap modifier adding 67 Solid Shading 94 spacecraft engine grappling claw 178 grappling gun, adding 172 mirror modifier, adding 174 missile launcher, working on 181 pipes, adding 166, 168, 169 Sensor Suite 183, 184 spacecraft accessories, creating 133 body, building 118 bottom of ship 183 building 118 cockpit, adding 197 details 158 details, adding 137, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163 final view 247, 248 finishing touches, adding 217, 218, 219, 220 landing gear, building 185 materials, creating 228 models, preparing 223 scene, preparing 223 small parts, adding 204, 205, 207, 208 small parts, creating 202 Split Angle 20 Subdivision Surface modifier 55 Subdivision Surfacing used, for creating body of robot 263 T texture adding 99 baking 341 mapping, changing 110 scale, adjusting 111 textures map checking 367 Torus object 166 torus adding 77 tris (triangles) 15 [ 375 ] www.it-ebooks.info U UV Map 337 UV mapping 242 UV maps adding, with decals 244, 245 creating, with decals 245 used, for adding decals 242 UV unwrapping 337 UV/Image Editor 340 V Vertices W Wireframe mode 96 [ 376 ] www.it-ebooks.info All About Packt Thank you for buying Blender 3D Incredible Machines About Packt Publishing Packt, pronounced 'packed', published its first book, Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management , in April 2004, and subsequently continued to specialize in publishing highly focused books on specific technologies and solutions Our books and publications share the experiences of your fellow IT professionals in adapting and customizing today's systems, applications, and frameworks Our solutionbased books give you the knowledge and power to customize the software and technologies you're using to get the job done Packt books are more specific and less general than the IT books you have seen in the past Our unique business 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proposals should be sent to author@packtpub.com If your book idea is still at an early stage and you would like to discuss it first before writing a formal book proposal, then please contact us; one of our commissioning editors will get in touch with you We're not just looking for published authors; if you have strong technical skills but no writing experience, our experienced editors can help you develop a writing career, or simply get some additional reward for your expertise Blender 3D By Example ISBN: 978-1-78528-507-3 Paperback: 334 pages Design a complete workflow with Blender to create stunning 3D scenes and films step-by-step! • Make use of the powerful tools available in Blender to produce professionalquality 3D characters and environments • Discover advanced techniques by adding fur to a character, creating a grass field, and fine-tuning a shot with post-processing effects to enhance your creations Blender 3D Cookbook ISBN: 978-1-78398-488-6 Paperback: 608 pages Build your very own stunning characters in Blender from scratch • Establish the basic shape of a character with the help of templates, and complete it by using different Blender tools • Gain an understanding of how to create and assign materials automatically, working in both the Blender Internal engine as well as in Cycles • Familiarize yourself with the processes involved in rigging, skinning, and finally animating the basic walk-cycle of the character www.it-ebooks.info Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition ISBN: 978-1-78439-993-1 Paperback: 400 pages Over 40 practical recipes to create stunning materials and textures using the Cycles rendering engine with Blender • Create realistic material shaders by understanding the fundamentals of material creation in Cycles • Quickly make impressive projects production-ready using the Blender rendering engine • Discover step-by-step material recipes with complete diagrams of nodes Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines ISBN: 978-1-84719-746-7 Paperback: 316 pages Modeling, rendering, and animating realistic machines with Blender 3D • Walk through the complete process of building amazing machines • Model and create mechanical models and vehicles with detailed designs • Add advanced global illumination options to the renders created in Blender 3D using YafaRay and LuxRender Please check www.PacktPub.com for information on our titles www.it-ebooks.info [...]... least 4 GB of RAM) Windows 7, Mac OS X, or Linux The Blender 3D software package, free to download at www .blender. org Who this book is for This book is aimed at intermediate Blender users looking to increase their hard surface modeling skills Although we do review some basic tools in the first chapter, this isn't meant to be an introduction to the Blender software package Users should be reasonably... the end of this section, we'll be ready to move on and detail our pistol: A project overview Creating the barrel Modeling a handgrip and other pieces Welcome to Blender 3D Incredible Machines In this book, we'll be working through a series of Blender projects aimed at increasing your modeling, texturing, and rendering skills Before we jump right into it, there are a few quick things that we need to cover... user can do the following: Navigate comfortably in 3D space Switch between different views Add objects to a scene Move, rotate, and scale objects Open, close, and save files Switch between the Object and Edit modes Switch between face, edge, and vertex selections Add modifiers Drink large quantities of coffee This book is called Blender 3D Incredible Machines for a reason We're going to focus on building... take you from knowing nothing about the software to cranking out sophisticated 3D models; unfortunately, this is not realistic Blender' s an incredible piece of software, but it's also complex The sheer number of features means that learning to use it (or at least, learning to use it well) is a long-term endeavor The best Blender modelers in the world will tell you that they always discover something... screenshots/diagrams used in this book The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output You can download this file from: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/f iles/downloads /blender3 dincrediblemachines_ColorImages.pdf Errata Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text... we can tell Blender which angles should be sharp and which should be smooth It's an incredibly useful tool for creating machines in Blender To add it, just go back to your Modifier and select Edge Split [ 19 ] www.it-ebooks.info Sci-Fi Pistol - Creating the Basic Shapes Once you add the modifier, go ahead and hit Smooth on the toolbar at the left-hand side of the screen This will tell Blender that... that the normals are inverted In Blender (and other 3D applications), a normal is the vector perpendicular to your face or the direction that your face is “pointing” at When normals are inverted, they can cause all types of problems with your model Lines that should be smooth may end up looking sharp, and materials and textures may not work properly In older versions of Blender, there were no visual indications... Freestyle Rendering, looks at the specifics of FreeStyle rendering We'll also cover the creation on non-photorealistic (NPR) rendering in the Blender Internal render engine Chapter 9, Low-Poly Racer – Building the Mesh, takes a look at one of the more common uses of Blender building game models We'll explore how these models are different from the ones we've already done and what specific techniques we... the series of faces that I just created point in the wrong direction: [ 14 ] www.it-ebooks.info Sci-Fi Pistol - Creating the Basic Shapes Blender does have a tool for automatically correcting normals When you select all the faces with the A key and press Ctrl + N, Blender attempts to calculate the proper direction of the faces and flips the incorrect ones Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well with... like to create the gun barrel [ 15 ] www.it-ebooks.info Sci-Fi Pistol - Creating the Basic Shapes As you do so, you'll see more faces with incorrect normals At this point, however, we have a real 3D object, so Blender will be able to recalculate our normals properly Select the entire mesh again and hit Ctrl + N All of your faces will instantly point in the correct direction Now, let's move to our side .. .Blender 3D Incredible Machines Design, model, and texture complex mechanical objects in Blender Christopher Kuhn BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI www.it-ebooks.info Blender 3D Incredible Machines. .. ii ] www.it-ebooks.info Preface Welcome to Blender 3D Incredible Machines In this book, we're going to explore the world of hard-surface modeling in Blender This is distinct from organic modeling... barrel Modeling a handgrip and other pieces Welcome to Blender 3D Incredible Machines In this book, we'll be working through a series of Blender projects aimed at increasing your modeling, texturing,